The last three virtues might be the key to the film's success. I was never a fan of Wang & Auster's Smoke; I found the film as nebulous as the title and as contrived, coy, and sentimental as the worst of Wang's uneven repertoire. The actors seemed trapped in an unwieldy artifice. In Blue in the Face, which employs the same setting and many of the same characters, they are set free to invent their own dialogue and indulge in their best and worst impulses.

Set in Smoke's Brooklyn Cigar Company, a corner smoke shop owned by dapper Louis (Victor Argo) and presided over by Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel) behind the counter, Blue consists of a series of sit-com-like premises extemporized by the Smoke regulars and by a cast of guest stars. Standouts among the latter include Michael J. Fox, whose religious questionnaire applied to staid smokeshop patron Tommy Finelli (Giancarlo Esposito) is a masterpiece of escalating zaniness, including such queries as "Do you believe in God?" and "What is the minimum you would have to be paid to eat a bowl of shit?" Jim Jarmusch's bit as a customer quitting the habit is funnier than most of his films. And Lou Reed's ongoing commentary on the state of the world is as comically bright as his music is dark. "I don't get scared in New York," he explains. "I get scared, like, in Sweden. It's empty. Everything works. Everybody is drunk. You turn on the TV and there's an ear operation. These things scare me."

These segments are so inspired that even the stiff appearances of Lily Tomlin as an annoying homeless guy and Madonna as a snooty singing telegram deliverer can't spoil them. Roseanne is another matter. She's Dot, Louis's unhappy wife, who's annoyed with her hubby's failure to fulfill his promise to take her to Las Vegas. After an uncomfortable kissing scene with an ambivalent-looking Auggie, whom she tries to seduce into running away with her, she has a noisy, seemingly endless and badly ad-libbed altercation with Louis on the subject of lack of communication.

But Keitel is a superb master of timing and of the deft quip and even defter pause. He's more than matched by the sultry and extraordinarily gifted Mel Gorham as his spitfire Latina girlfriend, Violet. Just the way Gorham says, "Hello, Dot" is enough to blow Roseanne's caterwaulings off the screen, and when she sings "I Got the Fever" to her mirror while taking off her clothes, it's probably the most erotic moment in the sexual wasteland of this year's movies. She and Keitel provide this loose free-for-all of a film with a backbone and the most vivid expression of its prevalent theme: the need for seeming opposites to be drawn together. Her flamboyant sexuality and openness challenge Keitel's distant geniality and lack of commitment, and their intermittent mating dance sparks the episodic format with a dramatic arc.

Blue does have its off moments, especially when it takes a little too seriously its themes of multiculturalism and community. Tempted to sell his tobacco store to a health-food chain, Louis is visited by the ghost of Jackie Robinson (Keith David), whose memories of Ebbets Field and ode to the hallowed traditions of Brooklyn are heartfelt but tend toward the mawkish. More to the point are the lessons taught in the film's opening and closing segments: two tales of crime and punishment teaching wry lessons of forgiveness and hope - commodities much in need in these dark days after O.J.